Recently, there is an increased need for high performance resin-engineering plastics, plastic alloys and composite materials to be applied to products since a plastic technology of vehicles have been extended to the applications of structures and function parts besides exterior and interior parts of vehicles.
Crash pads are installed in front of driver seats as interior parts of vehicles, and designed to accommodate instrument panels incorporated with speedometers, fuel gauges and water temperature gauges, and the like, air-conditioning systems, radios, clocks, ashtrays and small articles, thereby having an usefulness in the consideration of design and convenience.
In particular, crash pads are considered to be very important parts in the consideration of safety because they are provided with an air-bag and located in front of driver and passenger seats so as to minimize the force transmitted to passengers from external impacts and diminish injuries upon accidental collisions and rollover accidents.
Such crash pads are manufactured in accordance with the trend toward environmental-friendliness, high emotion, weight lightening, and the like, and classified largely as a soft and hard-type, and the soft type crash pads having three layers consisting of a dual skin layer, a forming layer and a core layer and retaining soft cushion in the appearance have been widely used.
Meanwhile, as shown in FIG. 1, the conventional crash pads have been manufactured by (1) shaping a skin layer, (2) subjecting the skin layer to a skin scoring process, (3) mounting the skin layer on a core layer, (4) injection a forming liquid into the skin layer-core layer, and (5) closing a mold to foam the forming liquid.
However, the conventional process comprising the step of (2) subjecting the skin layer to a skin scoring process as described above, may have a variety of problems of an increase in manufacturing costs, an increase in cycle time, an increase in labor costs and working hours for the management of remaining amounts after scoring, and the seamline exposure at the start of the process or after ageing.
Thus, although a technology development to fulfill the needs for crash pads having optimal efficiency along with the increasing needs for vehicles according to recently rapid social development is urgently required, US 2012/0139214, KR 2013-0132190, JP 2007-332777, and the like neither disclose such embodiments nor solutions addressing aforementioned problems.
The inventors have made an effort to improve these problems and now accomplished the present invention by providing a crash pad for vehicles and realized process simplification, cost reduction and weight lightening by not being subjected to a skin scoring process when molding a skin layer in the foaming specification of the crash pad, possessing the performances equivalent to those of the existing crash pads, and solving the problems of the seamline exposure at the start of the process or after ageing, as well as retaining increased cushion by the optional addition of a foam sheet and realizing the extension of foaming specification applied to luxurious vehicles into low cost vehicles and thus the effect of enhanced cost competitiveness. The foregoing discussion is to provide background; foundation only and does not constitute an admission of prior art.